


there now, steady love

by starsshinedarkly77



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Cuddling, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Reference to Bad Parenting, Singing, What Have I Done, really this is disgustingly fluffy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-30
Updated: 2016-05-30
Packaged: 2018-07-11 02:13:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7022332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starsshinedarkly77/pseuds/starsshinedarkly77
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Kylo leans forward slightly, stretching out his back, and rolls his shoulder blades, trying to loosen some of the tension that’s built up in them. The air outside is beginning to feel thick, moist, as though it might rain, and as he’s in no hurry to get soaked through on top of everything else that’s happened today, Kylo stands up to close the window. He is just sliding the curtains back into place when he hears the click of a key being turned in the front door."</p>
<p> </p>
<p>In which Hux is late to dinner. In which everyone falls apart now and then. In which Kylo learns how to put the pieces back together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	there now, steady love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mousedeer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mousedeer/gifts).



> Wow, guys, it's been awhile, hasn't it? I'm not sure how I feel about this fic, but it's finished and I'm putting it out here in the universe. This fic was written in response to a prompt from iambnotwhatiamb on tumblr! I hope they and all of you enjoy it!
> 
> (Title from 'Look After You' by The Fray.)

It’s grown dark in the past half-hour. The sky is not yet pitch black, but a shade of navy that is slowly giving way to indigo which will give way to pitch black, in time. Kylo has been watching out the open window, his arms crossed and propped against the sill, staring stonily out as the last streaks of orange and pink faded out of the sky and sunset turned decidedly into nighttime. A faint breeze is flowing through Hux’s apartment, carrying the smells and sounds of the city in with it.

  
He doesn’t know exactly what time it is, but it’s late, Hux is late, and Kylo is resolutely pretending that he is not pouting, absolutely not, he just fancied a look out the window, that’s all. It’s not as if Hux promised to be home at a certain time, a time that Kylo watched come and go on the clock on the face of the microwave as dinner (the dinner he actually cooked all by himself, instead of calling for takeout like he usually does) grew cold on the table. It’s not as if he called Hux four times and texted him twelve without receiving a single response, no matter how long he waited, before he got huffy and lobbed his phone across the living room, where it thudded against the wall and slid behind the sofa and is still waiting to be retrieved. It’s not as if he almost didn't feed Millicent in an act of passive-aggressive revenge before taking pity on her, dumping her nightly can of wet food into her bowl before he stalked over to the window and threw it open and stayed there for thirty minutes straight, hardly moving and trying to think as little as possible.

  
Of course, trying not to think rarely works out for him, and his thoughts have spent the last half-hour chasing themselves around in ever-dizzying circles, irritation that becomes anger that becomes worry that becomes fear before it transforms into irritation once again. Hux promised before he left this morning that he wouldn't work late tonight, that he would be home in time for them to have dinner together, and Kylo’s first instinct is to think that something terrible has happened to Hux on his way home from work, that he’s been in a car accident or something and is laying injured or dead in the hospital and that’s why he’s not answering his phone, because he’s fucking _dead_. The other, more rational part of him that’s been fighting down the rest of his paranoid thoughts for years, knows that Hux probably lost track of time and is still at work, so absorbed in whatever task he’s doing that he’s missed all of Kylo’s attempts to contact him, or perhaps even let his phone run out of battery. That part of Kylo’s brain is fucking _pissed_ , because this is far from the first time this has happened and it sure as hell won’t be the last. Hux is an overachiever, he works too hard and for too long, and it’s always a fight trying to get him to come home early or take time off, but he’d _promised_  tonight, sworn up and down that he’d be here, and he is not here, and all Kylo wants is for him to come _home_  now.

  
Kylo hates watching television, but he’d turned the set on just so the empty apartment wouldn't feel so empty, and he can hear the gentle rumble of conversation and the stale-sounding laugh track drifting out from the living room, mingling with the sound of the wind rushing through his ears from the open window. In his head, he’s composing what he will say to Hux when he gets home, trying to stifle the part of him that wants to pick a fight. It’s difficult - he’s never been good at controlling his anger, or at verbalizing what he feels without resorting to screaming matches and fits of pettiness. He’s fortunate that he and Hux have been together long enough that Hux has learned to pick up on what Kylo is feeling and thinking without Kylo having to say it. He’s also unfortunate for the same reason: Hux can tell when he’s beating down his urge to be angry, to pitch a fit, and that often drives Hux into defensiveness or that infuriating, condescending, holier-than-thou persona he likes to use on people who irritate him and that he knows Kylo absolutely despises.

  
Kylo doesn’t want that tonight. He was counting on a warm, quiet evening and he doesn’t want it to be completely soured by a huge row with Hux. He knows Hux won’t have been late on purpose, that he’ll be apologetic, that he’ll insist on making it up to Kylo somehow, and Kylo will probably accept this without much hostility or pouting on his own end. It’s a difficult area for him, this, trying to figure out what to latch onto and what to let go. He has to battle the urge to let everything slide, to forgive automatically and pretend that everything is fine in order to avoid doing anything he thinks might frustrate Hux, anger him, drive him away. He’s let himself be stepped on by people in the past, so desperate to keep them that he let them get away with far too much, take too much of him, until they left and he realized there were vital pieces of himself missing, that he didn't quite know who he was or how to go on by himself. He doesn’t want to be like that anymore; he _can't_  be like that anymore, because it’s been too hard and taken too damn long to reclaim any sense of self-respect and self-worth for him to let it go now. He can’t fight that fight again.

  
On the other hand, though, he knows he has a natural tendency to overreact to things, to take things too personally and feel them too deeply and take it out on the people around him when they don't really deserve it. He’s getting better in both regards, because he’s old enough and worldly enough now to know how important balance is, and knows himself well enough to figure out how to achieve it. It’s been a long time coming, and he only wishes he’d had the same sort of self-control earlier in his life, but ‘better late than never’ is one of his father’s favorite platitudes, and though they differ on almost everything, this is one sentiment that Kylo wholeheartedly agrees with.

  
Kylo leans forward slightly, stretching out his back, and rolls his shoulder blades, trying to loosen some of the tension that’s built up in them. The air outside is beginning to feel thick, moist, as though it might rain, and as he’s in no hurry to get soaked through on top of everything else that’s happened today, Kylo stands up to close the window. He is just sliding the curtains back into place when he hears the click of a key being turned in the front door.

  
He stays standing in front of the window, feet locked in place, and traces Hux’s homecoming with only his ears: his keys hitting the bottom of the bowl in the entryway, the bell on Millicent’s collar jingling as she leaves the kitchen to greet her master at the front door, the soles of his shoes falling against the hardwood flooring in the hall before he comes to a halt right outside the living room. Kylo doesn’t turn, not yet, not right away, because he has not decided yet what he will say, cannot even tell what he will feel when he turns around and sees Hux. There is no way to feel out the atmosphere like this, with his face turned towards the window and only the faintest sensation of Hux’s eyes passing over his back. In this moment, like so many other moments in Kylo’s life, there is only uncertainty. Nevertheless, he steels himself, breathes slowly in as if an influx of oxygen will somehow hold him upright, and turns around.

  
He is unprepared for what he sees.

  
The look on Hux’s face steals the words right out of his throat, everything he might have said or screamed or whispered washed cleanly and immediately out of his mind. Hux’s features are tight, drawn, his mouth pinched in unhappiness, and his hair is disheveled, as if he’s been raking his fingers through it like he does when he’s nervous, when there’s too much tension built up in his hands for him to keep them still. That’s not the part that worries Kylo, though; the part that worries Kylo is the eyes, Hux’s eyes, normally so sharp and green and full of life. Right now they are dull, downcast, weary, rimmed right at the edges with red - if Kylo didn't know better, he would think that Hux has been crying, but it cannot be, Hux never cries, has not cried in the whole time he has known him, so the red must be from something else, from exhaustion, from the effort of keeping himself awake for too long, has to be. Above all else Hux looks _fragile_ , like he could fall apart at any minute, like if Kylo reached out to touch him he might shatter, pieces of him sent flying to embed themselves in the carpet and in the fabric of Kylo’s shirt.

  
A lump of fear settles itself firmly in the base of Kylo’s throat, keeping him silent, but even if he could speak he does not know what he would say. When Hux did not come home, when his thoughts hurtled towards _something is wrong, something is wrong,_  he beat them away, but for once his paranoia seems to have been telling him the truth.

  
He steps forward, wordlessly, and the feel of his foot reconnecting with the floor breaks the spell somehow, jerks both he and Hux out of frozen stillness and silence. In the next instant Kylo is across the room.

  
“What happened?” he asks, so soft and breathless he can barely hear himself. His chest feels tight; it’s hard to breathe. His hands reach up, settling gently on either side of Hux’s face, his thumbs smoothing over the other man’s freckled cheekbones. Hux does not even raise his chin to meet Kylo’s gaze. “Oh, God, babe, what _happened?"_

  
Slowly, slowly, Hux lifts his hands, wraps them around Kylo’s wrists and squeezes, as if he’s looking to ground himself somehow. He releases a breath through his nose, long and slow, not quite a sigh but something else, and his eyes flutter shut slightly as he leans into Kylo’s palm.

  
“I’m…alright,” Hux says, his voice weak, strained. His eyes slide back open, and he must take in the brief look of skepticism that crosses Kylo’s face, because he repeats himself, then - “I’m alright,” - and this time it is stronger, more assertive, more like Hux’s normal tone. “Nothing devastatingly awful has happened, don’t worry.”

  
“But _something_  happened,” Kylo presses. Unthinkingly, he reaches for the strap of the messenger bag hooked over Hux’s shoulder, and Hux allows him to remove it, ducking his head as Kylo pulls it away and drops it to the floor.

  
“Just a very, very long day,” Hux says tiredly. Kylo, not satisfied by this answer, stays silent, waits. Hux sighs, closes his eyes again. “My father called.”

  
Oh. _Oh_. “What did he want?” Kylo asks cautiously.

  
“The usual,” Hux says. He sounds about a million years old. “To ask prying questions and cross-examine all of my major life choices. Nothing I’m not used to. I’m fine, Kylo, I really am.” He steps away, out of reach of Kylo’s arms, but he stops there, looking lost, like he doesn’t know why he moved or where he’s trying to go.

  
Hux’s father is a dick, but talking to him doesn’t usually upset Hux to this degree. Typically, Hux will be irritated for hours on end afterwards, starting various rants about how ignorant and hypercritical and passive-aggressive his father is before he cuts himself off, only to start right where he left off ten or fifteen minutes later. Kylo knows how to deal with that particular mood, either by offering a sympathetic listening ear or by distracting Hux with the prospect of certain ‘recreational’ activities that are usually a little bit improved when Hux is just ever so slightly riled up. Sometimes, sometimes, once in a blue moon, Hux will simply go quiet for a long time after getting off the phone, and brush away Kylo’s concerns when he expresses them with a forced smile and a carefully chosen phrase or two. Kylo lets these go for the most part; Hux is a grown man and can deal with his own feelings however he wants to. If he doesn’t want to talk, he doesn’t have to.

  
But tonight - tonight, something is different. Tonight, Kylo doesn’t think he can let it go. Tonight, he doesn’t think he _should_  let it go. He knows what it’s like to bottle things up, and Hux is even better at that than Kylo is, but that only means a bigger explosion when he finally breaks. If he has to break (and everyone has to, everyone has to sometimes), then Kylo would rather he break quietly, calmly, safely, right here, where they can move through it together. Where Hux knows he isn’t alone.

  
“What did he say to you?” Kylo asks softly. When Hux doesn’t answer immediately, he presses onward. “Don’t lie to me, I know you don’t usually get this upset after you talk to him.”

  
Hux sighs again, rubs his index finger across the bridge of his nose. “I told you it was a long day, I wasn’t lying about that. Him calling was just…the last straw, I suppose. He didn't say anything that out of the ordinary, for him, it just.” He falters. “It felt. Different, somehow. It made me remember everything else he’s ever said to me, and instead of this being only one conversation it felt like having all of them at once. It was just…a bit too much, today. To remember how,” and here Hux begins to blink rapidly, looking up at the ceiling, away from Kylo, “how he’ll never really be proud of me, no matter what I do or how hard I try. Never.”

  
His voice catches roughly on the last word and Kylo’s chest aches, _aches,_  like his heart is turning over inside of him. He feels tears prick the corner of his own eyes - he’s a sympathy crier and always has been; he’s an _everything_  crier, it feels like some days - but he fights them back, forces them down. One of them has to stay strong, one of them has to be the one to tell the other that everything is going to be alright, and it’s always Hux, it _always_  is, but he should not have to be strong all the time, should not have to be resilient and steadfast right this second, so it falls to Kylo to do so, and he’s determined to keep it together. He has to, because he owes it to Hux, owes it to him for all of Hux’s unending support, for all the nights they spend on the bathroom floor with Kylo sobbing until he makes himself sick, wailing all the things that he despises about himself and striking at his own body until Hux takes his fists in hand and kisses the knuckles so very, very gently before he says, as plainly as he would declare that the sky is blue, that Kylo is beautiful. No one else has ever done for him what Hux has, no one, and even if Hux does not always understand, he is always there. Kylo owes this to him.

  
So he swallows back everything he feels and takes Hux in his arms, and Hux - stiff, rigid, proper Hux - goes limp and boneless against him, all but collapsing into his chest. His shoulders hitch once, again, and Kylo clutches him tighter, smoothing his hands across Hux’s trembling back.

  
“It’s okay,” Kylo mutters against his hair. “It’s alright, you’re alright.” He kisses the shell of Hux’s ear, as lightly as he can manage. “You can cry, it’s okay, you’re safe. You’re safe. I’ve got you.”

  
Hux presses his face further into Kylo’s collarbone, and for a moment Kylo thinks he will pull away, swipe at his eyes, pretend that this never happened. He doesn’t. Hux makes a sound like Kylo has never heard him make, something between a whimper and a cry, and then he is sobbing weakly, his hands clutching at the shoulders of Kylo’s t-shirt.

  
On some instinct Kylo slides his arms down to wrap around Hux’s lower back and then lifts him several inches off the ground. Hux loops his arms around Kylo’s neck and allows himself to be carried like that into their bedroom. Kylo has no free hands to turn the light switch on with, so he steers them directly towards the bed, lays Hux gently down on top of the comforter. Half of him wants to remove Hux’s shoes, some of his clothes, to make him more comfortable, but Hux seems unlikely to release the vice-grip he has on Kylo’s shirt, so Kylo simply slides him over on the bed and lies down next to him, pressing the full length of his body against Hux’s.

  
They lay there for a length of time that Kylo can’t determine, the room quiet save for Hux’s muffled sobs and the tick of the ceiling fan overhead. Eventually Kylo hears Hux swallow thickly, taking in deep gulps of air, trying to steady himself.

  
“I’m sorry I missed dinner,” Hux whispers. In the dim light coming in through the window, Kylo can see two more tears slip down Hux’s cheeks.

  
“Shhhh,” Kylo whispers back. His fingers hook themselves in Hux’s hair, rubbing circles against his scalp in what Kylo hopes is a comforting way, and he kisses Hux’s forehead. Once. Again. Again. Again, until the kisses grow soft and open-mouthed, and Kylo simply rests his chin against Hux’s forehead and leaves it there, breathing in the scent of him: his hair gel, his cologne, even the soap he uses, buried somewhere beneath all the rest.

  
They are breathing in time with one another, and it feels as though they are one body connected instead of two merely intertwined. After a long moment, Hux shifts in Kylo’s arms.

  
Kylo thinks briefly that Hux is going to try to get up and readies himself to bodily prevent him from doing so, but it seems he’s only adjusting, making himself more comfortable. He’s gone quiet, now, his sobs dissipated, but his nose whistles a little as he breathes in and out.

  
“What do you need?” Kylo inquires, softly, into Hux’s hair. “What do you need me to do?”

  
Hux always asks him this while he’s holding Kylo’s hair back away from his face, when he’s using wads of toilet paper or the pads of his own thumbs to mop the tears off of Kylo’s cheeks at three o’clock in the morning when they both have work the next day and should be in bed but can’t be because Kylo’s brain won’t shut up and let him rest. Sometimes, Kylo asks for water; usually, he just asks Hux to stay with him, to stay, please stay. He does not know what Hux will ask for. To him, it has always been clear that he needs Hux far more than Hux needs him.

  
Tonight, that isn’t true. Maybe it never has been at all.

  
“Will you…” Hux starts to ask, then hesitates.

  
“What is it?”

  
“It’s nothing,” Hux says, and when Kylo fixes him with a hard stare, he bites his lip. “It’s stupid, it doesn’t matter.”

  
“It’s not stupid,” Kylo says. Nothing that Hux wants right now could be stupid. If Hux asked him to do cartwheels, he’d do cartwheels. If Hux asked him to teach Millicent how to fly, he’d make the first breakthrough in the yet-unheard of field of feline aviation.

  
“Will you…would you…sing to me, maybe?”

  
Kylo blinks. This, he hadn’t expected. He very rarely sings, and certainly never in front of anyone else, not even Hux. He doesn’t think much of the sound of his own voice - he doesn't actively hate it, as he does with many other parts of himself, but he’s not especially fond of it. It’s too deep but lacks power, lacks conviction, and is prone to tremble at the slightest change of his mood. He has no reference for whether he’s any good at singing or not; when he chances a couple of verses in the shower every now and then, he thinks he sounds passable, but for all he knows he’s entirely tone-deaf and in reality sounds horrible.

  
But this isn’t about him, this is about what Hux wants, and Kylo is going to give him what he wants. How could he not, when the request is so simple, so shyly delivered, when what Hux needs to make him feel better is so easy to give him?

  
He’s stayed quiet for too long, and Hux says, “You don’t have to,” while he pulls his hands away from Kylo’s shirt, but Kylo holds him fast, presses another reassuring kiss to his hairline.

  
“Of course I will.”

  
The problem is that he doesn’t know what to sing. His brain flickers through all the pop songs on the radio he knows all the words to, but Hux doesn’t enjoy most of them and they aren’t all that soothing, in any case. A lullaby would appropriate, he thinks, but he doesn’t know any, really, has never really needed to. Kylo strains his memory, thoughts wandering back to his own childhood, dipping in - and then, he remembers.

  
Before he got old enough to be embarrassed by it, his mother would always sing to him after he had a bath in the evening. Wrapped in a towel, with still-wet hair, he’d sit in his mother’s lap, her cradling him close, while she sang sweetly in his ears, always the same songs, in the same order, every night. That was so long ago, now, but the memory of how warm, how safe, their nightly routine made him feel is so strong that it feels like only yesterday. The words of the songs come back to him as though he had never forgotten them in the first place, and without thinking, he draws a breath in and opens his mouth.

  
_When I was just a little girl_

_I asked my mother, "What will I be?"_

  
He doesn’t sound as good as his mother, but he’ll have to do.

  
_"Will I be pretty, will I be rich?"_  
_Here’s what she said to me._

  
Hux rests his head against Kylo’s collarbone as Kylo continues on.

  
_Que sera, sera_  
 _Whatever will be, will be_  
 _The future’s not ours to see_  
 _Que sera, sera._

  
For a moment he isn’t sure if he remembers the second verse, but it forms in his mouth as he goes.

  
_When I grew up and fell in love_

  
(and here he squeezes Hux a little tighter, and Hux squeezes back)

  
I _asked my sweetheart, “What lies ahead?”_  
 _“Will we have rainbows, day after day?”_  
 _Here’s what my sweetheart said_

  
Kylo lets his volume drop, tilts his head so he’s singing into Hux’s ear, just for him, only for him.

  
_Que sera, sera_  
 _Whatever will be, will be_  
 _The future’s not ours to see_  
 _Que sera, sera_

  
He’s not sure the last verse fits, but Hux is warm and calm and soft in his arms, and he wants nothing more than for this moment to last forever, so he sings it, slow and sweet, just the way he remembers hearing it.

  
_Now I have children of my own_  
 _They ask their mother, “What will I be?”_  
 _“Will I be handsome, will I be rich?”_  
 _I tell them tenderly_

  
His palm moving in gentle circles across Hux’s back accompanies the final chorus.

  
_Que sera, sera_  
 _Whatever will be, will be_  
 _The future’s not ours to see_  
 _Que sera, sera…_

  
The last note dies out in the darkened room, and it seems that the whole world has gone still to listen, because nothing moves when he finishes, not even him, not even Hux. It doesn’t take him long to realize why: Hux has fallen asleep and is snoring gently into Kylo’s throat, his fingers still clasped against the collar of his shirt.

  
Kylo should get up, he knows. Their uneaten dinner plates are still on the kitchen table, and he’s left the lights and television on in the living room, and Hux will have a stroke if their electric bill is as high as it was last month. He hasn’t brushed his teeth, either, and both of them are still wearing all of their clothes, and Hux still has his shoes on, and -

  
And -

  
And all of that can wait, he thinks, looking down at Hux. It can wait.

  
Right now, he’s got more important things to do.   


**Author's Note:**

> (I do not own the song included in the fic - 'Que Sera Sera' is by Doris Day.)
> 
> check out my tumblr at starsshinedarkly77.tumblr.com


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